sort of a silver lining

It's been a strange year, 2020.  Covid-19 has prevented a lot of things:  travel, restaurant meals, seeing people.  Between October of last year and February of this year I was in the new house part of the week and in the old house part of the week.  Then in February my husband (and our cat) moved to the new house with me, so at least we're together. 

But since they moved out here we've had a chance to visit relatively few people.  My brother came to dinner one night in May, and a friend later that summer.  Another friend in late summer (she had to wait till her dog recovered from surgery) and two more friends in September.  And my brother-in-law and his wife last week.  So, 7 people since the beginning the year, basically.  And though I do go to work, I spend a lot of time in my office with the door shut.  We have very few in-person meetings, and the ones we do have we're required to sit distanced and wear masks and so forth.

So we do a lot of meetings on MS Teams.  I positively dreaded that when it started.  It's been twenty years at least since I could hear well on the phone, and it still wasn't great.  I could understand some people not too badly on speakerphone, but big meetings with multiple attendees were excruciating and I could always count on not hearing at least party of what went on.

But there it is.  Or here we are.  Or some cliche to that effect.

In any case, I dug up my neckloop and tried connecting to my mobile phone when I called in; it was kind of okay but also apparently caused noise on the line or, I don't know, feedback or something.  So I was told.  I have this little USB fan on my desk in case it's warm in there and I think some of the feedback was the noise from the fan, but I didn't feel the need to tell anybody that.

But then I had some trouble with the cell phone - I don't even remember what, now, but I decided to try pairing my neckloop to my laptop instead of my phone.  And man, but that worked well.  Clarity and volume that I haven't heard since the Clinton Administration.  Seriously, it's incredible.  

And I'm not at all sure I'd have tried it - my default mode has been to avoid talking on the phone at all costs, but lately I've had some calls with suppliers in addition to my meetings and it's remarkably functional.

There isn't much that you can say has been getting better this year, but hearing on the phone with my CIs is one of them.  And that's pretty dang cool.